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Paul Godfrey appointed by Liberals to head troubled OLG

The provincial Liberal government is betting on high-profile Progressive Conservative insider Paul Godfrey to turn around the troubled Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp.

As first reported by thestar.com, Godfrey, the president and CEO of the National Post and a former chair of Metropolitan Toronto and past Toronto Blue Jays' boss, will be brought in to chair Ontario's gambling monopoly.

Paul Godfrey, president and CEO of the National Post, said he's "honoured by the opportunity" to chair the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (STEVE RUSSELL / TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO)

"Proceeds we derive from OLG are invested in hospitals, schools and other important programs and services," Finance Minister Dwight Duncan said in an email Friday.

"Mr. Godfrey's guidance and oversight will help ensure the OLG manages its operations as effectively and efficiently as possible. We look forward to the positive new direction that Mr. Godfrey will bring to the culture at OLG," said Duncan.

Godfrey – who was also once publisher of the Toronto Sun and is a founder of the Herbie Fund, which helps children receive life-saving surgeries – said in an interview he was "honoured by the opportunity" to go to the OLG.

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"I have every intention of continuing on in my responsibilities at the National Post," he added.

By nominating a prominent Tory, the Liberals hope to politically neutralize an agency that has caused the government some embarrassment in recent years.

That Godfrey is well regarded by Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak is a bonus to the Liberals.

"Paul Godfrey has experience in both politics and business and has dedicated countless hours of service to Ontario and Canada," Hudak said in a statement.

"He will need all of those skills to clean up the mess Dalton McGuinty has made of the OLG with back-to-back scandals and an energy centre at Windsor Casino that has yet to produce a single watt of power," he said, referring to the controversial power plant located in Caesars Windsor.

Godfrey's appointment also took the New Democrats by surprise.

"The question is why would a good Tory do it?" said the NDP's Michael Prue (Beaches-East York).

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"He's a good and capable guy. He has a reputation as a fixer. But here he's been handed a real hot potato," added Prue.

"They've been doing things so wrong for so long at OLG. Unless the Liberals have given him a real mandate I don't see how he's going to fix it."

McDougald was dismissed in part because the Liberals feared the opposition Tories would use OLG executives' expense accounts released through freedom-of-information requests to attack the government.

She has since launched an $8.85 million wrongful dismissal suit against the province.

The housecleaning in the executive suites at OLG was the culmination of years of problems at the agency.

McGuinty's administration was unhappy when provincial casinos awarded foreign-made Mercedes-Benz cars as prizes at the same time the government was bailing out General Motors and Chrysler.

An audit last winter also found that the agency treated a good Samaritan shabbily when he tried to turn in a cache of lost tickets; a malfunctioning slot machine erroneously informed a player he had won $42.9 million when the maximum payout was $9,025; and a misprinted scratch-and-win ticket led a man to believe he had won $135,000 when he hadn't.

Godfrey, 70, whose appointment requires the approval of the Legislature's standing committee on government agencies, is a master operator, as familiar with a political backroom as he is a corporate boardroom.

From 1973 until 1984, Godfrey chaired the old Metro level of government that used to encompass what is now the amalgamated city of Toronto.

Instrumental in bringing the expansion American League Blue Jays to the city in the 1970s, he later became publisher of the Sun and spearheaded an employee-led buyout of the tabloid chain.

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